The World's First Entirely 3D-Printed Gun Has Been Successfully Test-Fired

Just days after revealing that he was working on a 100 per cent 3D-printed weapon, Cody Wilson appears to have successfully test-fired the Liberator pistol, a gun made entirely out of plastic. Great.

The Liberator is a fairly wonky-looking pistol, constructed entirely out of plastic — the only metal working component is the firing pin, which is a repurposed nail. It appears to fire .22 rimfire rounds, which are very small but still quite lethal when fired into a squishy human being.

Although the Liberator hasn’t exactly been stress-tested yet — Wilson only fired one round between the cut-shots of WWII era bombers — it does appear to work, which essentially means that yes, 3D-printed guns, are now a reality. But hey, according to Mr Wilson: “Yeah, they might be used [to kill people], but that’s not a reason not to make them”. And if one law student says so, there’s no reason to be worried, right? [Defence Distributed via BBC]

Gizmodo UK is gobbling up the news in a different timezone, so check them out if you need another Giz fix.

Comments

This is going to pose an interesting challenge for travel security! The metal detector won't pick up plastic gun parts. An innocuous nail will likely be missed by the X-ray scanners. If somebody works out how to 3D print bullets and we're going to have a problem...

If the hand grip was less conspicuous, you could separate the entire weapon into pieces spread throughout your carry on. Go through at a peak security/close to change over time and they will likely miss the parts in a scan. Ammunition is another problem though, Plastic slugs perhaps?

3D printed weapons are a bad idea I believe. How about we learn to print food and not kill each other?

"Within a few years, we believe it will be possible to manufacture living tissues like skin, cartilage, arteries and heart valves using cells and biomaterials. Using a patient’s own cells to create this tissue avoids issues of immune rejection. By 2025, it is feasible that we will be able to fabricate complete functional organs, tailored for an individual patient.”

Interesting to note, and not mentioned in the article is that guns that have no metal parts are actually illegal in the US (because you can pass metal detectors). This one had a hunk of metal embedded in the handle to avoid that.

Plastic or ceramic guns have been around for a long time so this is not any of newer of a risk. the issue is the accessibility for people to now create guns in the comfort of their own home. The volume of illegal firearms will increase. Also from a legal standpoint to convict criminals obtaining the gun used is a massive benefit. Most of the time the gun used is kept by the criminal due to the cost to purchase and possibly the difficulty to obtain another gun, So linking murders to a gun will disappear as criminals will now burn the gun after committing a crime, (no need to throw it away for it to be found) and can easily and cheaply print a new gun at home.

Maybe the solution is to stop looking at guns as the source of all evil in the universe and accept the reality that people will be able to access them from the near future onwards.

Efforts should be focused at addressing the underlying issues leading to use of guns in crime. I.e. mental health, criminal enterprise (bikies, drugs, corruption, poverty, etc).

America is obviously not a great example in saying gun restrictions should be eased, I don't want metal detectors in schools (though based on this development they won't work anyway), but the game is changing.

I cannot believe that the first object they choose to create with a 3d printer is a gun, a goddamn gun. In this day and age, with the problems we have with guns.

Guns kill people. It's much easier to kill someone with a gun than a knife. You give a murderer a gun, he kills 50 people, you give him a knife, probably about 2. It's as simple as that. The whole guns don't kill people etc is possibly the most ridiculous argument ever devised to defend something.

While I agree with you 100% on the issue with guns, I think you're well wide of the mark regarding a gun being the first thing made.
3D printing has actually been around a little while now and some great things have been done already.
http://www.technewsdaily.com/5242-incredible-3d-printed-products.html

Soo from what I know (ie if this http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/showlink.aspx?bookmarkid=GHJRO7TH9GR4&preview=article&linkid=e5bbcaf4-cf87-4200-ae79-275709f260be&pdaffid=ZVFwBG5jk4Kvl9OaBJc5%2bg%3d%3d is right), then there's a newer (sexier) model out now.

I think a lot of people here are focusing only on airport security.
It's still a scary thought that anyone could print one of these, especially in Australia where we have real gun laws, the fact you could just print one and put it in the hands of a young person is much scarier than whether or not you could take it on a plane.

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